This is only one of several quietly mesmeric moments in Stifter's Dinge by the composer Heiner Goebbels, a work whose title may sound like a rare venereal disease, but is actually a conceptual work of - for the most part - contemplative beauty. It takes place in the P3, a huge concrete space situated in the bowels of London's University of Westminster, and was commissioned by Artangel, of course, who specialise in these epic art events, and tend to attract an audience comprising the faithful, the curious and the just plain baffled. Here, it was quite easy to be all three, often at once.

The work is inspired by the writings of an obscure early 19th-century Romantic writer, Adalbert Stifter, whose texts, on this evidence, possessed the same discursive and cumulative power as the writings of the late WG Sebald. 'Dinge' apparently means thingy. Which, in an epic way, is what has been created here.

For some reason, perhaps known only to himself, Goebbels has intertwined Stifter's words, spoken by the voice of pure calm himself, Bill Paterson, with the speeches of Malcolm X, and a recorded interview with the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. I also detected the deathly tones of William Burroughs, a name that, when invoked by conceptual artists, is usually guaranteed to send me running from my seat into the night. Here, it all worked somehow, not least because of the atmospherics of the piece: the darkened hall, the water and its ghostly reflective power, the deft use of light, sound and, particularly, the sheer intricacy and ambition of the mechanics. It is a work that prompts the question 'How did they do that?' almost as often as 'What does it all mean?'

As with all high-end conceptualism, then, Stifter's Dinge requires a degree of surrender on the audience's behalf. Here, the music, especially the Bach piano interlude, combined with softly falling rain, and the shifting, eddying water, helps lull the audience into an almost trancelike state of concentration. Likewise, Bill Paterson's soft, rich, Caledonian tones, which have the odd effect of making Stifter's description of an ominous ice-scape seem warm and inviting.

There are inevitably one or two longueurs, mostly involving light filtered though white fabric, but the piece builds and falls to its own clunking, whirring, swooshing rhythms, punctuated by the odd outbreak of industrial cacophony that recalls the work of Einstürzende Neubauten, those pioneers of industrial music. In the main, though, Stifter's Dinge makes for an oddly relaxed evening out and, afterwards, you can wander around Goebbels's big sound creation trying to figure out how it all works.

On the night I was there, this became almost a continuation of the performance itself, with people peering intently at the pianos, the electrical circuits and the text that had mysteriously appeared beneath the surface of the water. I left hoping that Adalbert Stifter actually did exist, and was not just the creation of Heiner Goebbels's obviously fiendishly clever imagination.